“Such matters are far beyond my skills,” Sheershym said. His face looked especially waxen with fear, something unspoken.
“What?” Tylar asked.
“Even if there were a cure,” the master said, “I fear its potency might never reach where it is most needed.”
“Why’s that?”
“There has been talk and speculation amongst the masters since you rose to your regency. Arguments and thoughts shared by raven’s wing. One consensus is that the naethryn inside you…isn’t truly inside you. How could it be? Instead most believe it to be tethered to you while trapped half in this world, half in the naether. For any hope to burn the poison from the creature, you must bring it fully here.”
“Which I failed to do before,” Tylar said.
“And while poisoned, you may never be able to do.”
Rogger shook his head. “A perfectly laid trap.”
But it wasn’t the only one.
Brant suddenly sat up on the neighboring litter, gasping out as if startled by the terror of a dream, “She…she…”
A shout caught his words and finished his thought, coming from the forest, in the direction of the cliff’s edge. “She comes! She comes!”
Dart straightened, along with everyone else.
Even Brant gained his legs, wobbly but supported by Lorr.
They all stared to the east, toward the burnt swath of the black river.
The Huntress was on the move.
“The river remains quiet,” Brant said. “Takaminara seems to show no interest in stopping the Huntress this time.”
“She may not be able to,” Rogger said. “It must have cost her greatly to split the land the first time.”
Their party gathered at a hunting lodge that overlooked the cliff’s edge. It had been turned into a watchtower by a pair of sentinels, boys barely past twelve. The lodge offered a wide view of the valley floor, once a green sea, now split by a black river.
Brant shifted the arm in his sling. The firebalm had sealed his wound, and Grace already knit the tissue with a burning itch. Between his eyes, a throbbing ache persisted, the dregs of his poisoning. His left leg also felt numb and thick. But the walk here had helped return sensation with a fiery prickling.
He was alive.
But for how long?
Harp stood at his shoulder. Brant could not believe how much his old friend had grown. Once shorter, he now stood half a head taller than Brant. But so much remained the same, too. The worried crinkle at the corners of his eyes, the way he tapped his chin when struggling with a puzzle, even the same crooked grin, offered when he’d first crossed to Brant back in the camp. Still, despite the warm and genuine greeting, there remained a darker look to his eye, something Brant had never seen before. Shadows that would forever haunt his friend.
Brant studied the land below. In just the short time it had taken to come here, the Huntress had led her war party halfway across the river. She did not shy from its burn and stink any longer. Brant had heard the story of Harp’s flight. The Huntress, angered by their escape, meant to end this now.
“They move swiftly,” Tylar said.
“And so must we if we’re to reach the cliffs and the hinterlands beyond,” Rogger said.
Brant had walked these lands as a boy. He knew them well. The Divide fell away into the hinter about two leagues away. A hard march, but one they should be able to make. They had already sent ahead the youngest and oldest, to await word at the cliff’s edge, in case Takaminara chose to protect them yet again. No one wanted to enter the deadly hinterlands unless there was no other choice.
Now they knew.
“We must go,” Brant said.
Harp had everything prepared. While camped here, he’d had ladders woven of vine and sinew. They waited at the Divide, coiled and ready to be unfurled down the cliff into the hinterlands. But Harp had planned further strategies as well.
“I’ll leave ten of our fastest runners,” he said and pointed to key high points. “Along the ridges here and there. With arrow and bow, they should be able to hold the pass, slow the others a bit longer. We don’t want to be caught on the cliff, still on the ladders. A few ax chops and we’d all be tumbling headlong into the hinter.”
“How likely will her hunters be to follow us down there?” Tylar asked.
“She won’t stop until we’re all dead,” Harp said with certainty. “But I’ve already soaked the ladders in poxflame oil. Once below, we can set the ladder afire. Burn them off the cliffs. It will take time for any pursuers to find another way down.”
Brant read the appreciation and respect in the regent’s eyes as he nodded. “Very good,” Tylar said.
Krevan stood at the lip of the cliff, a long glass to his eye. He finally lowered it. “Six score,” he said. “Eighty with bows. Forty with spears.”
Harp frowned at him. “Six score? You’re sure of that count?”
Krevan stared hard, not bothering to answer.
Harp’s frown deepened as he glanced below. “The best of her hunters number two hundred. She comes with too few.”
Brant understood what he meant. All attention had been on the war party that crossed the river directly. But the burn spread to the north and south, stretching out of sight in both directions, beyond the view of the sentries in the makeshift watchtower.
“She sent others ahead of her,” Harp said and turned to them, his eyes wide with worry.
“To close off our escape,” Brant said. There was a reason their god was named the Huntress.
Confirming this, screams suddenly erupted, faint and distant, coming from the top of the pass. Where the others had been headed. Horns sounded from that direction, echoing darkly through the wood.
The snare had been sprung.
Responding to the horns, the Huntress called to them from below. Her voice carried to them, borne aloft in Grace.
“I want only the Godslayer and the boy! To bring his stone!” Horns punctuated her words. “The rest will be allowed to leave my realm. But any further trespass will be met with blood!”
“What are we going to do?” Dart asked as the horns echoed away. She stood with Lorr and Malthumalbaen at the door to the lodge. “You can’t go down there.”
“Agreed.” Krevan pointed toward the Forge. “Best we fight our way through to the Divide. There are only two score up there.”
“Two score of her best hunters,” Harp said with a sour shake of his head. “And they have the high ground. Even if we could make the cliffs, they’d burn us or chop us off the ladders.”
The Huntress called again, pointing an arm. “Come to where the black rock meets the green wood! In the open. If you are not there when I set foot back to loam, your lives-all your lives-will be forfeit!”
Brant watched Tylar study the spread of hunters below, his eyes narrowed with calculations. Though his body was broken, his mind remained sharp.
Tylar finally spoke. “Krevan, lead the others toward the Divide. Gather everyone you can along the way. Keep them safe.”
The leader of the Black Flaggers seemed ready to argue, but whatever he saw in the regent’s eyes held his tongue.
Dart was not so reticent. “I can be of help,” she said.
“No. If the Huntress spots anyone else below…” Tylar shook his head. “We dare not antagonize her any further. And I’d rather you’re safely away.”
“Then take Pupp at least. No one can see him, and he’s…he’s fierce.”
“He is indeed. But we’ve never tested his nature against a god, and now is not the time to find out. Still, you’ve given me a thought.”
Tylar turned to Harp. “You mentioned swift runners. Take me to your fastest.” With a nod, Harp led him around the corner of the lodge.
Dart came to Brant and touched his arm, still unconvinced. “It is surely your death if you go down there.”
“I pray it’s only my death,” he mumbled, remembering the bloodstained lips of Marron. “Perhaps this is my path. It started in the shadow of the Forge. Maybe it is supposed to end here.”